Seventh Setback for Trump – Judge Strikes Down Deportation Plans

San Francisco, a late Friday night or early Saturday morning, and suddenly the clock stands still for more than a million people. Edward Chen, federal judge in the Northern District of California, has put the Trump administration in its place. In one stroke, the mass deportations are stopped, at least for now. The ruling affects around 600,000 Venezuelans whose protection status had expired in April or was about to end in a few days, and another 500,000 Haitians. They may stay, they may work, they may breathe again.

Chen chose sharp words. He said that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wanted to “send them back to conditions that even the State Department warns against.” This was not just a legal reprimand, it was a moral indictment. The judge called Noem’s decision “arbitrary and disproportionate,” an overstepping of authority. The rules for the Temporary Protected Status program, or TPS, had been applied for decades with care, with analysis and interagency consultations. “Until now,” Chen wrote – a sentence like a thunderclap. For human rights organizations, lawyers and journalists this ruling is more than just a legal victory – it is the confirmation of a months-long fight. For weeks we ourselves have had two researchers working solely on combing through data, compiling files, forwarding them to lawyers. The goal was to correct the picture painted by the government: that distorted image in which TPS holders are portrayed as a security risk. The sober numbers tell a different story and the entire resistance work is beginning to bear more and more fruit. Over 95 percent of these people have no criminal background whatsoever. They are caregivers, drivers, construction workers, restaurant employees, people who literally keep the United States running every single day.

The personal fates that appear in the court documents are painfully clear. A restaurant employee from Indiana, mother of a young daughter, was deported to Venezuela in July after a routine appointment at the immigration office. Her husband, a construction foreman, now faces the choice: earn money or care for the child. A FedEx employee was arrested in his uniform, slept for two weeks on the floor of a detention center in fear of being sent to El Salvador – to a country notorious for its massive prison complexes. “I am not a criminal,” he wrote in his sworn statement. “We are here to work and contribute, not to watch our families be torn apart.” The government continues to defend its policy. In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security spoke of an “abused, politicized amnesty program” and lashed out at “unelected activist judges” who were blocking the will of the people. The statement said that all legal means would be used to stay the course. But even an appeal cannot erase what this day means: a judicial dam break in the middle of a policy that since Trump’s second term has systematically ended legal residence programs – Humanitarian Parole, TPS, everything was on the chopping block.

One could say that this ruling is more than just an administrative act – it is an uprising of the rule of law against an executive that has made the weakest into pawns. For a moment the country holds its breath, just like the people affected who only yesterday were hovering between fear and hope. Perhaps this ruling will not be the last word, perhaps the Supreme Court will intervene again as it did in May. But on this evening in San Francisco, another truth hangs in the air: that you cannot simply erase millions of people without someone stepping in front of them.